Thursday, September 23, 2010

It was lunchtime the day before and I was checking Gmail when I saw an offer for blogs to be advertised for a couple of hours on the Net. Thought it would be a good opportunity for a fledgling blogger like me. I saw a small rectangular box where I could design my "ad". Fourteen years of experience and the seniority that comes with it immediately baited me to pull ranks and ask "studio" to make something good. Maybe a copywriter friend could also help. And an art director just needed to spend a couple of minutes.

Then I thought that something was not right. Here I am, writing away merrily about life everyday, without any "agency help". So why ask now?

All I needed was a headline. How could I describe my writings? After a few sips of Pepsi Max and mouthfuls of canteen chole and chawal, I keyed in " Life Is Wonderful". Because whatever I write, I humbly attempt to capture some of life's wonderful moments or learnings. The subheadline was "An honest and real life blog".

This is what was in my email inbox this morning. Hope you like it as much as I do. because without your support, this and the 900+ clicks could have never happened.

Our Feedjit Rush launch yesterday was incredibly exciting. We've had everyone from major universities to gaming companies sign up and send a surge of visitors to their sites. We've also learned some surprising things about what kinds of ads generate high click-through rates. Rather than focus on PR today, I want to share one of the surprising things we learned.

We had a number of great ads appear today on Rush. Many of them were clearly written by experienced copywriters. We saw a lot of variations in font size, font family, italics and so on. But early in the day someone posted an ad that generated a surprisingly high click-through rate.

The ad used simple Arial size 14 text with a bold headline that simply said: "Life is Wonderful".

The positive message in this ad reminds me of a story Robert Cialdini tells in the book Influence about a car salesman. Every month Joe Girard sends over 13,000 cards to previous customers with a simple message: "I like you". It may sound corny, but Joe Girard holds the Guinness world record for being the most successful car salesman in history.